The best way to talk

Have we got it right: modern ways of talking?
In the church of Jesus Christ, love is the greatest; deep loving, understanding relationships central. It is out of these relationships that the world will see that we are followers of Jesus Christ.

But all relationships feed on communication, therefore how we communicate, affects our relationships. Are we in danger of using harmful, or at least inadequate, forms?

Ways we communicate

Many of our ways of talking are electronic: texts, phone-calls, e-mails, Facebook, Skype, and so on. But as helpful as these means are, they all fall short of the ideal.

God's method of communication
..... God sets the gold standard of communication. He has spoken to us through his Son, who is The Word. All previous ways of communicating, whether prophets or visions, are superseded by God's supreme Word to us.

What is so significant about God's ultimate disclosure was that it was personal, face-face. How do we know what God is like? We walk around with Jesus Christ through the Gospels and see him in action and through his words and actions learn what he is like.

God could have chosen to send down a set of gold plates from heaven with his words inscribed upon them, but instead he chose his Son, The Word, incarnated as a living, beating human being, to speaks to us. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

God has spoken to us in glorious flesh and blood 3-D. 

Our template...
There is something about 3-D that trumps all the other forms of communication we use today, including blogging. For one thing, it is harder to misunderstand one another when we are in person. For another, it's "hard to hate when you get that close" (to steal a line from Harry Chapin).

I don't know what all of this means for we who believe, apart from the need to make face-to-face our primary means of communication, and other means very much secondary.

Stuart Olyott's "Don't phone me" plea
I will never forget a former pastor of mine, long before the days of e-mail and Facebook, telling his congregation not to phone him but to talk to him in person. He recognized that even a 2-D phone call (one up from text, for moods can be detected) did not match 3-D human communication.

Stop reading this blog and let's go for coffee at Caffe Bolero....